


longing; I'd be lost without my

by Ani



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Prose Poem, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ani/pseuds/Ani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock returns from the Fall, John tells him he is in love with him, Sherlock does not (cannot) return it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. codicology (S)

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone  
   enough  
-

    In the corner of your mouth I see the sentimentality of bones. In memory you keep me, anchorite mind storing the turn of wrist and curve of teeth and color of eye; in the desert hair keeps forever. Do you use cuneiform, I wonder, do you carve my words into rock, if I cracked you open (you would let me) would I find my thoughts like petroglyph of your skeleton, abraded; do you use bronze or heat torches. Is there water erosion down your spine, encoding: we know what this phrase would be - I can read it in the bumps under your skin, in the way you hide your neck when I come close, so you do not take the risk to bear it bare. You keep it, keep it all, your limestone rock the remains of the dead, secret foraminifera washed ashore, the sediment of history you bear in the river of your veins.

  
    I don’t ask for it. I will never ask for it. I see the knitting in (of) your eyebrows when I dismiss you; the stitching is loose, has grown loose since I left; you are more threadbare now, elbows loose and worn, a mouth that would have worn away if ever kissed. If I lay fingers on the stitching can I tear it open, will your face part for me, will I find anything more rare than flesh? They used bones for needles, you know. You will know if I tell you. If I open you will I find myself inside, mirror made from rubbed sand, compressed, ratio wrong, but present; hollow but best reflecting. Have you so filled yourself with the memories (I don’t bother to keep) that only the psychogeography of my history fits inside your skin?

  
     I will never ask for it. I dismiss sentimentality. You dust in the past; you, dust in the past; you, dust of the past; you potsherd, your fragment of stone and glass, your ancient vessel, tell me, does the sand you drink slake thirst? But how could it be anything but the picking of bones, for you. You who created yourself from splinters, ostracons and ambiguity, you who held hope. A hope broken (the words on your spine) but scaerd cannot be any other way. And so: your story from beginning includes a fall that overlaps all which came before. You, broken and written upon: ostracon, from whence, ostracized; and I did exile you. You blame yourself for this. You apologize. You should have kept your secret, our secret, ours though I take no possession; you should have swallowed it you say.

  
    A rock in your throat we were, for all our history: and so at the fall, our past rewrites itself, I see what was over what had been; stripped layers, the earth gorging up her metacarpal. We lived in time three ways. You hold idyllic: the small intimate world, the everyday life, so thus wrote Theocritus. So thus wrote Virgil. Augustus refused Virgil’s wish, poem published after death, but you would have taken yours to the grave and I made no demand (not knew to make a demand; no desire to see it fulfilled once spoken). You hold ideal past in memory, the incipit of your history our history, its sewn signatures your capture of our laugh, our whispers, our secrets - you would add, here, the shape bow of my lip when grinning, the smell of shared shirts, the exact idea had when there I casually slipped and became independent of my uttering in your incunabula. You hold lacunae: the second secret history of what not-said, steps taken back, steps taken away, glances never caught. I have never asked you to relive (relieve of) this second history. You restrain yourself from it; whether I am not interested in past, or this past, or yours, you do not ask. You restrain and palimpsest. You hold. You are always holding, holding in, holding on, holding up, holding from, holding within, holding down; sediment is produced from pressure, from layers compacted, from what is smashed down and buried and buried again. If I peeled back your skin (you would let me) would I find trembling, vibrato, is it work to restrain, I wonder (I never have).

  
    I don’t ask and still you keep inscribing memory; there, I suppose, should I someday need it; there, I suppose, in case your careful rendition of errata catches my amusement; there, I suppose, because it is all you have of me (can have of me). If I cracked you open (you would let me) I could see my own reflection, but, retraction, I will never open you and have no interest (and this you know). In the corner of your mouth I see the sentimentality of bones. You would rather carry my loss than not carry us at all.

 


	2. ebonist (J)

for there I would be dishonest, untrue.

I want my conscience to be

true before you;

-

 

     Because it is any day now you realize that I told you. Because I had already held our stories in my mind with incantation and the paths were grooved with well-worn use: because I had already imagined kissing you and wondered if you would taste hesitant or bold, if it would be sharp or soft or would feel like we had already a thousand thousand times; I had already imagined your hands, knew how they felt, your grip, knew how you felt, the breath dragging across my skin, how I fit into you how I would shape around you but I thought there would still, be new, new ways to learn; I had (already imagined) what it would feel to lose you, wondered if you would turn, if I would see your sharp shoulders your final silence a bleak blackness in the back of your hair if you would say, no, if you would say, I think you should leave now, if you would say, I could not ever, even if you would be kinder, if you were gentle, it would still be gentle final snap to a well-grooved box, wouldn’t it. You don’t open boxes. You don’t open boxes. I know that. I knew that, I knew the stories, I knew my chances though not to mathematical precision, that’s more your song than mine, my song is harmony; I can not contain your melody, I cannot contain your multitudes. If I open a box and hear music do the hidden evils still escape, I wondered, is it possible to snap it shut, leave inside our mythical hope, though it is you who open jars from curiosity, isn’t it; you who send gifts from Underground, Anesidora, dragging up evidence of bones; why evil, we all ask, why, we all ask but you; you do not ask, you merely answer, evil contends with good. You stole us fire and so I am made of clay. This jar/box is a mistranslation (you would say) the confusion half-buried, a jar, I am a half-buried jar, a funerary jar (we are given dead we create dead are we hope given or hope withheld, I might ask (I don’t)).

 

     I did not open this/self out of anything so noble as curiosity; I opened to see if you would, (I opened) because I had to, (I opened) because one day you would know and you hate lies and I cannot lie (and I will tell the not-lie: if you open it is it possible to then snap it shut and leave hope inside and the answer I can say now is no, no it isn’t, no it won’t ever be (but I cannot say to leave it closed)). I told because I tell, I am a teller of tales, I trade stories for your look; it is not a look at me, it is a look at my words, in the words that fall like stones from my mouth rattling in teeth clattering on the metal at our feet (words are misused music, you say), but I know it and so it (mostly) doesn’t bother. I told because it was hard not to. I told because I hadn’t before you left and if I didn’t before you died again (repraise) it would make my tongue fall to dust in my mouth and so: wooden, I told you; afraid, I told you; and so scared, I told you; and so hopeful, I told you; and so sadly, you had to know; as if I had passed a cross (well will you bear it, now) and you had become cold like a snowfall over secrets like lattice around nucleus like dendritic crystal and buried remote inside like stunning star like hidden eye was despair but on the out, cold, calm, you started with apology (a kindness) and at first sibilant I fell because isn’t sorry simply no.

 

     I told you and now it lies between us, flat note and cold pool.

 

     Thus it is not possible to escape the mind of.


	3. akinetopsia (S)

dark and smart.  
I want my free will and want it accompanying  
-  
  
Our running is as it was, in that you follow (will follow will always follow) but at the end when we would gasp and look and laugh to know the other was alive (your concern), we now gasp and look and I see in your look my zoetic: I beat brightly I am  I fill your vision. I become your iris and devour pupil whole I am super charismatic to suprachiasmatic nuclei I am the light and the life I am monomania to monocular; your transparent vitreous humor passes over us to reduce the aberrations we both see. We both know. We both know as we fill our lungs with breath hearts beating (yours beats for mine) we both know what you want I will never return and so from the tree to alveoli we grow close we grow apart we grow together you grow without. From the tree to alveoli I breathe oxygen, you breathe my breath; it will 

poison you, you know. You know. 

  


I do not think much of it (your concern). It is your obsession. From obsidere: besiege; from ob/before and sedeō/I sit; but before you sat, before I sat, before your visual cortex told your eyes to watch, before, before I sat in your occipital lobe before then; that is wrong, logically aberrant, logically abhorrent; it can not occur before. (You say you) did not occur before. There is only the after. And anyway you do not sit, you stand; stand before me, stand behind me, stand besides me, stand at my grave: it is all you do. You stand and we run. We run and I do not think of it (you) besides the evidence of your trail besides the evidence of your air behind me not until the end and we look and you look away, embarrassed, at the honesty written in your eyes. I eat your eyes. I devour them whole. Our running is as it never was. You run away from me and I let you go. You don’t see anything else and that it is the way it will be (you say) (they say) from perfect passive participle to the end.


	4. homophony (J)

  enough

to be to you just object and thing,

-

 

     I’m sorry (I say) you’re sorry (you play), we both sing, we both sing around the truth you dance to the sound we cannot hear, a sound the rest of us will never understand. Your steps outpace me outpace us all your pace is out of syncopation; it is your beautiful burden, is it not? And syncopation: the loss of sounds in the middle of the word and all of my words have missing spaces, all the beats we do not reach, all beatings I take which are of a heart beating on its chest beating against beating on; all of my words have missing spaces of the times in which I wish I could awe in the times I would say but it is too many times and I am afraid of our hesitant truce it is too many times too many beats per minute they say that a beat faster than a heart is the devil’s work but then, they say a lot of things, but then, you say you aren’t on the side of angels, but then, you said you weren’t human and we both know your beats are fleshy and simple like ours like mine but we know not like mine; they are mine yours are mine even if I cannot beat as fast as yours my metronome is slower and still I only sing for you. And for this, mournful for this, I say sorry; but not too many times afraid of our hesitant truce and mostly you ignore it mostly you pretend it/I do not exist mostly you go on as if the same, as if always, our always is the same except when I can hear it in your song and you’re sorry, too, and it is that I hold inside in the quiet spaces. It is dangerously close to hope.


	5. propolis (S)

never be blind or too old  
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.   
-   
  
Will you come with me, I ask. It is mere formality. You come as you always will as you always have, you come before I say where we go, you come because I ask and do I ask because you come? No, no, at least, I do not think so; I think I ask for you (although not for you as you have always wished as you still wish (always)). Pliny, Book 11: Insects A.o., bees, hives, the sources of honey, the organization of bees, honeycombs, drones, queen bees, portents provided by bees, bee-stings, the silk-moth, silk production, comparative zoology, and taxonomy: eyes, heart, anthropoid apes,... Honey is a symbol for immortality and on this account is laid out as libation; it is death though, death through, regurgitation, preservation, overabundance we steal. It is supersaturated in promise. The honey bee is resurrection too; such confused symbology, purposeless; still it collects. I say, lips anointed with honey are said to possess eloquence, prescience, I nod when you say (expecting it).

We go to our death, we are out in honey to die, to be laid out, libation, we do not ignore these truths nor do I ignore, when you open the window for us, gold light in glass, do you still hope for resurrection, do you still hope for immortality in my soul, while we collapse you carry on, if I cracked you open (you would let me) I would find in your wax seals the imprint of my flesh; you steal it, steal pieces, have collected impression to recover the loss of true knowledge; when I crack open wax combs in smoke and sleeping bees our bones crack too. We go, we age, you tell our story, you record again, again final, text and paper you tell of our collection, I do not ask for it but it breathes important in you, pumps your blood along, a quest, a goal, a striving towards, a striving, you must tell before we go and the gold light in the window dips to dark, you must tell and take it out of your bones and disappear doing it and you do it to have me, I suppose, a part of me, the part I give (have always given) (not enough) (too much) (the possible), the part I gave, we live in honey we live in libation we wait to die. Still you hope for the moment I reach out and still I won’t, still you cry, you cry for the bodies in the garden the ones who drown, they are not immortal; I say they are only parts to a whole but this is likely why you cry (you part to my whole). I have already died once but will not be resurrected again. Still you wait for immortality, still you wait for eloquent honey of lips, still you hope, still you bury, in your bones in the wax layers porous receding; if I cracked you open would I find it all turned to loss or is it still happy to hold on hope if hope is all you have (of me?). In the corner of your mouth I see the sentimentality of bees.

**Author's Note:**

> The opening lines of all chapters are from [Rilke's](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16290) "I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone."


End file.
